Free Anything but a Gentleman by Amanda Grange Page B

hear,’ she replied.
    As if to illustrate her words a sudden gust of wind almost whipped them away, so that he barely caught what she said. But catch it he did. Giving her a curt nod he stood aside. Moving past him, Marianne made her way surely over the rocks, moving in towards the cliff. The face of the cliff appeared to be sheer, but once past a group of boulders that lay, sleek and shining like a group of seals in the windblown spray, there was a slight crack. From the outside it looked to be nothing more than a fissure which widened into a bole at the bottom but Marianne knew what lay inside. She crouched down, turning to Lord Ravensford. ‘This is the way in.’
    He took one look at the small opening and raised his eyebrows. ‘You expect me to crawl through there?’
    ‘Either that, or be washed into the sea,’ she returned.
    ‘Miss Travis, you have a streak as hard as my own,’ he said with a mocking smile.
    ‘My streak is practical, not hard,’ she informed him. ‘Kit always managed to get through the hole, even when fully grown. You are a little taller than him, and a little broader, but not enough to make any difference. It might be best  to take your coat off before you try, though,’ she added thoughtfully, looking at the many capes which broadened his already broad shoulders. ‘I will go first and you can pass it through to me.’
    ‘A woman after my own heart. I have always admired enterprise.'
    Marianne pulled her cloak tightly round her and crawled through the crack, standing up inside a large, deep cave. A moment later the coat was pushed through to her and Lord Ravensford followed, standing up beside her and looking round in surprise.
    ‘Who would have thought it?’ he murmured.
    Marianne handed him his coat. As he took it his fingers grazed the back of her hand, searing it with a burning heat. She gasped, letting go of the coat more quickly than she had intended.
    He caught it as she dropped it, giving her a wicked look as though reading what was in her mind.
    Why did he seem able to do that? she thought, finding it intimate and disturbing. He had no right to know what she was thinking; especially as her thoughts these days seemed to be all about him.
    ‘If we go to the back, we’ll be above the tide,’ she said, picking up the hem of her cloak and leading him towards the back of the cave.
    Natural light came from a hole in the cliff top, lighting a strip down the centre of the cave and casting shadows into the rocky recesses. The floor of the cave was covered in sand; dark and damp by the opening, and light and dry towards the back.
    ‘We used to keep candles and a tinder box here,’ said Marianne, running her hands along a rocky shelf just above her eye level when she reached the back of the cave.
    Lord Ravensford, being taller than she was by some six inches, saw what she was searching for and fastened his fingers around the box just as her hand discovered it. The contact burned her like a brand.
    ‘Why aren’t you married, Marianne?’ he asked suddenly, his eyes glowing gold in the shaft of sunlight and his fingers remaining closed round her own.
    ‘I . . . I hardly think that’s a proper question,’ she gasped, her heart drumming in her chest.
    ‘Of course it isn’t.’ He gave a wolfish smile. ‘Proper questions don’t interest me. But you should be married,’ he said, his look suddenly intensifying. ‘A woman of your passionate nature shouldn’t be condemned to the single life.’
    ‘Passionate?’ She felt her eyes lock on to his, as though he was holding them there by some magnetic force, a force from which she could not break free. She made a determined effort and drew her eyes shudderingly away. ‘I am not a passionate woman,’ she said, trying to inject a note of normality into her voice.
    ‘Oh, but you are.’
    ‘That’s preposterous.’ She retreated into being Miss Travis, taking a step back and using a dismissive tone to hold him at a distance; or at